


The most valuable gift

by Isidar_Mithrim



Series: Featuring: Albus Dumbledore [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canon Compliant, Drabble, Flash Fic, Gen, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Missing Scene, Regret, Souls, Temptation, The Cloak, The Deathly Hallows, The Stone - Freeform, greed - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 04:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20325385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isidar_Mithrim/pseuds/Isidar_Mithrim
Summary: That Halloween, that terrible Halloween is close. Dumbledore is at the Potter’s, and James shows him something the old wizard can’t help but recognise, even if it’s been decades since he stopped looking for that extraordinary triad of magical objects…





	The most valuable gift

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Il Dono più prezioso](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/510169) by Isidar Mithrim. 

I saw it, and the temptation to touch it rushed through me, impossible to control.

_Possessed_.

By the craving to let my fingers run upon that cloth whose color was impossible to define, despite its silvery gleam.

“May I?”

My voice must have sounded tinged with greed, because James gazed at me with narrowed eyes, perplexed and unsure at the same time.

Nonetheless, he offered the cloak to me with delicacy. I couldn’t help but closing my eyes while I caressed this incredibly fluid object, yet gifted by its own consistency.

I laid it on my shoulders – I _had _to try it on – and not seeing my body, despite sensing it clearly, still shaken by the emotion, was simply _inebriating_.

Oh, it was _really _one of the three object I pursed so thoroughly in my youth.

Lily said something, but I didn’t even heard her.

“Could I borrow it?” I asked James.

“Since when you need a cloak to be invisible?” he said, half amused and half sceptic, and I wondered how could he be trivially _amused _in front of such tremendous piece of magic.

I smiled softly, and _lied_.

“Oh, I found it to be an extremely refined object. I’d like to study it, if you don’t mind.”

My tone was harsher than I meant, but he agreed, and that was what it mattered.

I tightened the grip around my wand.

I hadn’t even realised I’d grabbed it.

For how many years that invaluable treasure had been kept near me, without me knowing it… but finally, another Deathly Hallow had come in my possession.

I knew I shouldn’t be tempted, I knew I shouldn’t take it, but _dominating Death_…

I couldn’t even imagine what having a similar power could _imply_.

And so, I took that cloak away. I took _the _Cloak away.How naive was the young man in front of me… mistakenly certain that I was going to return it soon.

*

I couldn’t keep the tears from running upon my cheeks.

I recalled how _sickened _I’d felt accusing Severus Snape of selling Lily and James to Voldemort.

It was nothing compared to the disgust I was feeling toward myself.

I tried to restrain my thoughts, to contain them in small vials.

I tried to reject them with arguments that I dared defining _rational_, but before the fire of truth, objections were nothing but bellows.

The more I fought to disguise it, the more the truth, striking and indisputable, saturated my mind.

I clenched my fist on the stem of the red flower that Lily, the white daffodil, had sent me with her gratitude, I let the thorns piercing into my skin.

I enjoyed watching the blood leaking from my hand, but not even pain could shake me from the thought that my heart kept echoing.

_May be, if they’d had her Cloak, Death wouldn’t have find them_.

*

_“Use it well.”_

Use it well, unlike me.

I could have added it, but I didn’t have the courage.

Nurturing the certainty that I’d learnt the lesson was enough.

*

And now, hit by a deathly curse for wearing an ancient ring, I know I’ve never learnt the lesson at all.

At least, this time I’ll be responsible of my own death only.

_{“And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?”}_

May be, not only of my own.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :D  
Feel free to drop any feedback, suggestion, correction about the story or the translation, opinion about headcanons and so on ^^  
You can also find me on [tumblr](https://isidar-mithrim.tumblr.com)


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